First Casualties of the EFB/A

The Electoral Finance Bill/Act came into effect two days ago, meaning that any voices who oppose the government can effectively be silenced by the power of the gun, the government deciding who's fit to receive money to campaign and who isn't, and who is allowed to donate money and who isn't (all the while supporting the ideas of those who they don't support with their own tax money).

The first casualty on this war on free speech, ironically, is Helen Clark. At the start of the new year, a group called "People Power" threw a rock through the window of her electoral office in Mount Albert, to protest the act. It wouldn't be the first time someone has vandalized Helen Clark's electoral office; the first time, however, the offender was charged with sedition (!).

Tim Shadbolt, the usually Labour-leaning and provocative mayor of New Zealand's southernmost city Invercargill is now touting the opposition to the Act, telling his citizens and those of the entire country to not vote Labour.

To protest this act further, Cameron Slater of Whale Oil and Andy Moore of The Section 59 Blog have started up www.dontvotelabour.org.nz, and they could be the first people brought to court under the new law.

...but where's their $1200 that supports claim that the Act will stop? Maybe they should realize that the $1200 cap on personal anonymous donations is truly pitiful compared to the $4.8 million of public money Labour spent on election campaigning in 2005. But which party received the most anonynous funding last year? ACT!

Or perhaps you'd like to do a Chris Trotter, getting quickly off the actual issues to do a bit of scaremongering non-existent concepts in his twisted, Marxist view of reality.